Edgar Saltus: The Man Part 21

With thirty-five years' difference in their ages, and meeting him only when he was past middle life, she saw in him a great teacher--and he saw in her a rarely sensitive soul full of possibilities.

These potentialities were developed after Miss S---- went to New York, and soon placed her in a position of importance and responsibility.

She could not see in Mr. Saltus, as I did, a being who step by step had mounted a ladder of light on the rungs of his dead selves. She saw only the finished product, for the process of refinement, by which his greater qualities had been separated from the lesser, covered a long period of years.

Some of those who read this biography will say that Mr. Saltus may have been glad to escape at times from a home where animals were given so much attention. This remark has in fact been made to me by those who can judge only from the surface of things. The fabric of this criticism is, however, less substantial than moonlight. During the latter years of Mr. Saltus'

life much of Miss S----'s time was spent abroad. When Mr. Saltus saw her, as he did frequently during her intermissions in New York, he but left his home environment to go into a similar one. High-strung, nervous and temperamental, Miss S---- had the animal complex as strongly as I. Her apartment was never without one or two pets whose comfort, well being and happiness were her constant pre-occupation. Had he found these conditions under his own roof unpleasant, he would not have gone out of his way to duplicate them elsewhere.

Not long after Mr. Saltus' death, Miss S----and myself visited the Bide-a-Wee Home for Animals, of which I was a director. On our return home we noticed a poor lost cat trying to cross the street through densely congested traffic. With one accord we stood still, holding our breath, our hands clenched in agony, till the cat reached the further side in safety.

Our reactions were not only immediate, but identical.

I make no attempt to go into the whys and wherefores of it all, nor do I offer an explanation. The facts are as I have stated. An elucidation of them is work for a psychiatrist.

CHAPTER XVI

Toward the end of 1918, and after a short and unexpected illness, our Toto, who had walked beside us for over ten years, pa.s.sed over. To write of it even now is acute pain. The loss was like that of an only and uniquely beloved child. We were stunned, and in spite of my philosophy I went to pieces as I had never done in my life. It was over this heart-breaking event that Mr. Saltus displayed his extraordinary qualities.

"I wish you would have little Totesy's body cremated and her ashes kept and mingled with mine," he said.

Astonishment brought the reply,

"I never realized that you loved her so deeply."

"Nor did I until now, but it is not only that. Husbands may come and go, but there can never be but one Toto," he said. "With whom do you wish to be buried?"

I was silent.

"There, you have answered me," he said after a pause. "I am sure you are planning to be buried in the Dogs' Cemetery in Hartsdale. Do as I ask. Let Toto's ashes and mine be mingled,--then, no matter where you go or what you do in the future, yours too will rest with mine at the last."

His wishes were carried out, and the ashes of the little being we loved so deeply are mixed with his own. Under a modest head-stone on which is engraved his name and the word "Eternamente," but a few feet from the monument covering the remains of his brother Frank, their ashes rest waiting to include my own.

This death cast a profound sadness over us. From comparative health, I went into a state of collapse and prolapsis such as I had never suffered before.

Too ill and too indifferent even to speak, unless absolutely necessary, our apartment became a place of silence. It was the most awful winter of our lives, but to his credit it must be said that Mr. Saltus not only never uttered a complaint but pretended all the time that his legs were rapidly getting better.

An unfortunate lease chained us to the depressing surroundings. It scourged Mr. Saltus' very soul to see me in such a condition and be powerless to help, for all he ever asked of me was to smile. When I could not do that, his world became night. He would sit beside my bed, the foot of which was elevated to an uncomfortable degree, and chat at length and delightfully on the interesting mysteries of antiquity in his effort to divert my mind.

It was then he started on "The Imperial Orgy." Taking some articles he had written for Munsey's Magazine years before as a base, he undertook, with the aid of some up-to-date books and notes he had gathered together during the years, to make a volume. Writing was not as easy as it had once been.

It required an effort he had never before experienced. Added to this, he took on a new job. For a man of letters it was an extraordinary thing.

Unacquainted with any detail of housekeeping, hating the petty, uninteresting trifles necessary to it, it was a far step for him to undertake ordering the meals and going to market. Upon occasions when for one cause or another the maid failed to appear of a morning, he even made my tea and toast and brought them to my bedside.

All the time he pretended to have a fancy for this. The shops on Amsterdam Avenue in the immediate vicinity of our apartment got to know him well. Now and again he would come in and say:--

"I went into a shop around the corner and a young lady jumped into my arms, licked my nose and tickled my ear with her tail. Don't tell me I am not a winner with the women."

I had to smile at that. The "young lady" was an Angora cat who embellished a shop in the neighborhood. To the amus.e.m.e.nt of her owner and the customers, she would jump on Mr. Saltus' shoulders as soon as he appeared, and, wrapping herself about his neck like a scarf, would purr loudly. That cat pleased him enormously, and he was never tired of telling me about her.

It was her purr which made him a constant patron of the shop.

Mr. Saltus had a profound interest in the enigmas of the past, and knowing I was keen also, he would sit on the foot of my bed and chat for hours concerning the Gates of Babylon, the astrological orientation of the Pyramids, Tyre, Carthage and the Incas. He was at his best during these times,--profound, epigrammatic and cynical by turns. The pity of it is that he had no audience but myself. He could have held any a.s.semblage spell-bound for any length of time.

It was at this sad time, and during my breakdown which followed, that Mr.

Saltus gave fullest expression to the understanding, sympathetic and tender side of his nature. These qualities he always possessed in a superlative degree, and they were the leaven which made him unique among men. So certain was I always of his att.i.tude toward me, that it was my habit to run to him with a cut finger or an obsolete word. Whatever the case, my needs were answered immediately.

When I turned to him as usual, but with a breaking heart, he comforted me as he alone could. Night after night, when sleep dissolved into a mirage, he sat by my bed and read aloud to me. Algernon Blackwood was a great favorite with both of us. Some novel of his was always on Mr. Saltus' desk.

I could not count the times he read the short stories in "Dr. Silence"

aloud to me, and after reading discussed the various themes on which they were constructed. Talbot Mundy is another for whom Mr. Saltus had a great admiration, and his books were subst.i.tuted when we began to know "Dr.

Silence" by heart. He never asked me if I would like to have him read to me, or what particular books I fancied. He always knew, and brought the volume suited to my mood of the moment. Swinburne sang and scintillated through him many and many an evening, and no one could give the lights and shades, the flow and flavour of his verse, as Mr. Saltus did. He adored Swinburne. At other times Keats' "Nightingale" trilled in the twilight.

This was when I could be read to and diverted, but there were times when I was too ill and miserable to listen. Then Mr. Saltus would take me on his lap and rock me as one would a child, singing little songs he made up as he rocked. He had done this often during the years, but never with such tenderness as at this time.

A friend of mine to whom I gave a rough draft of this biography to read, said:

"Did you never do anything but quarrel with Mr. Saltus?"

That remark surprised me into reading it over in a new light. Then I saw what she meant. So much of our life together was quiet, uneventful and peaceful, that to bring out Mr. Saltus' many-sidedness, I have given prominence to incidents of various kinds--exceptional happenings, rather than our everyday life. As a matter of fact our life together was exceptionally harmonious.

It has been said by my critics, and with a great deal of truth, that I am the last woman on earth Mr. Saltus should have married. No one appreciates this fact better than I do--and this in spite of our similar tastes and temperament. A genius should never marry. There is that in his nature which not only unfits him for the limitations of conventional existence, but diverts and distracts his imaginative faculty and creative ability. If a genius marries at all, it should be to find not only a pillow for his moods, eccentricities and weariness, but a being who, merging her personality in his, supplements, and that unconsciously, such qualities as he may need in his work. The wife of a genius should lead his life alone--be able to antic.i.p.ate his needs and supply them, so un.o.btrusively that he accepts her services without knowing it.

Although anxious to do this, I could not. It was temperamentally impossible, however much I tried to bring it about. Many factors were at the base of this inability,--my frailty as a child and the continuous care given to me in consequence; added to this was the disparity in our ages, which tinged Mr. Saltus' att.i.tude toward me with that of a father. His former unhappy marriages had left their mark, and made him desire to be father, mother, husband and protector to me.

Coming into my life at the age and in the way he did, he was Edgar Saltus the man, never the author, to me, his work being lost in his personality.

This was what he wanted, and, as he frequently expressed it:--

"To the world I am Edgar Saltus the author, but thank G.o.d, I can be merely Mr. Me to you."

Times without number I tried to make myself over into the kind of wife a literary man should have, but with the same results. However much I tried to conceal these efforts, Mr. Saltus would see them and say:--

"Do stop trying to be somebody else, and be my little girl again. You think you know the kind of a woman I should have married. Perhaps you do, but I would have killed her ages and ages ago. Do be yourself. I wouldn't have you changed by a hair."

However much he was deluded, it was by himself, for I always told him that I was the last woman in the world he should have selected.

CHAPTER XVII

During this winter the distress in Mr. Saltus' legs increased to such a degree that it took him ten minutes to walk from the Arizona to the corner of Amsterdam Avenue, a distance of only a few yards. Most of the time he went in a taxi, but even getting out of one and walking the length of the hall to the elevator, was so tiresome and so painful that he had to sit in the lobby for fifteen minutes or more before coming upstairs.

Speaking of elevators, brings back Mr. Saltus' chronic objection to meeting people. It had increased with the years so as to become almost an obsession. He would wait any length of time in the lobby of the Arizona, rather than get in an elevator if there was anyone else in it. He was afraid someone might speak to him. When I had visitors (which, owing to my illness and his aversion, was infrequent) he would shoot past the living-room and down the hall to his study, forcing his tortured legs to such activity that it often took him hours to recover from the effects of it.

A year pa.s.sed after the death of our beloved Toto,--a year so like inferno, that even to think of it makes me shudder. With Mr. Saltus' helplessness it was a toss-up which of us was in the worse condition. I looked up one day to find him weeping. When questioned he said:--

"I wish we could die together, before you lose your reason entirely. While I live I can take care of you no matter what happens, but after----? It's killing me to watch you open bureau drawers and stand there striving to think why you opened them: to see you grasp the top of your head trying to remember. All these years you have surmounted everything. Now only, you cannot make the grade, poor child. Death should be meaningless to one who understands it as you do. Cannot you make your philosophy concrete?"

It was hard, but it made me take notice. A strait-jacket and a padded cell sprang into the perspective with his words, and the selfishness of sorrow stared me in the face. For the first time I realized what, in my indifference to everything, I had become, and it stunned me. While this was sinking in he spoke again:--